Maizuru

Onwards to Kyoto

The trip to Maizuru on an MSC cruise is the starting point for discovering the beautiful city of Kyoto. On an excursion you will be able to visit the Kasamatsu Park, the temple of Kiyomizu and the Arashiyama district.

The Kasamatsu Park can be visited on an excursion. There you can admire the Amanohashidate, a thin strip of land covered in pine trees and characterised by the beautiful sandy beaches of Miyazu bay. It is a natural wonder, whose name means "a bridge to heaven" because if you look at it upside down it resembles a bridge stretching up to the sky. At the southernmost end of Amanohashidate, the Buddhist temple of Chionji rises up. Here, one of the "Three important Monju Bosatsu statues", the God of Intellect and Wisdom, is held.

The Higashiyama Temple district, in the eastern part of Kyoto, conceals other wonders. For example the ancient Buddhist temple of Sanjūsangen-dō, where 1001 statues of Kannon, the Goddess of mercy, are kept; these are carved in wood covered with gold leaf to bear witness to order and continuity. The temple was founded in 1164 and was destroyed by fire shortly after. It was rebuilt identically one hundred years later. Older still is the Kiyomizu Temple. Founded in 780 near the Otowa waterfall on the wooded hillside east of Kyoto, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994.

On the western outskirts of Kyoto a stroll to Arashiyama, a pleasant neighbourhood with restaurants and shops, is not to be missed. It is also famous for its bamboo forest and Togetsukyo bridge, which was rebuilt in the 1930s and is a reproduction of a medieval wooden bridge. You can rent boats on the banks of the river.